But that impression would be so incomplete as to be entirely wrong. That seems to imply that this book has a much looser structure, might be a collection of occasional essays brought together because it was time for Donovan Hohn to have another book. This new book, The Inner Coast, has a different, simpler subtitle: Essays. All of these chapters-Hohn calls them “chases”-could have been separate inquiries, but those rubber duckies bind them all together as one effort in one book. He sails the northern ocean to get a personal feel for the movement of ocean currents. He writes about the scientists who study oceans and their currents. He goes to Chinese factories where plastic toys are created for the American market. He writes about the people who hunt beaches for detritus. That event becomes the line from which Hohn can hang several threads. The bathtub toys were set free on the waves of the North Pacific to begin their wandering all across the world. Hohn’s big first book is bound together by the narrative of these rubber duckies dropped from a freighter when a shipping container went overboard in a storm. In 2012, Donovan Hohn published Moby-Duck and gave his book a marvelous 18 th century subtitle: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them.

Donovan hohn